Jonathan Mendelsohn

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Jonathan Neil Mendelsohn, Baron Mendelsohn (born 30 December 1966) is a British lobbyist and Labour political organiser. He was appointed the Director of General Election Resources for the party in 2007.With Neal Lawson and Ben Lucas, he founded LLM Communications in 1997, a lobbying firm with notable access to the new Labour Government. He has been a spokesman and lobbyist for the gambling company PartyGaming.He had written to controversial Labour donor David Abrahams claiming he was one of Labour's "strongest supporters". In 1998 he was caught on tape along with Derek Draper boasting to Greg Palast, an undercover reporter posing as a businessman, about how they could sell access to government ministers and create tax breaks for their clients in a scandal that was dubbed "Lobbygate". Draper denied the allegations.In the same incident Mendelsohn was approached by an undercover journalist posing as a representative of American energy companies who were seeking to ignore environmental laws. Despite LLM's claim that "we believe that there will be a new breed of 'ethical winners' who will demonstrate that businesses no longer operate in a moral vacuum", Mendelsohn went on to advise the reporter to rephrase their plans into language that sounded "Earth-Friendly" going on to say "Tony [Blair] is very anxious to be seen as green. Everything has to be couched in environmental language – even if it's slightly Orwellian."He donated money to Peter Hain's deputy leadership campaign.Mendelsohn is on the board of directors of the New Labour pressure group Progress, and is a trustee of the UK charities the Holocaust Educational Trust and the UK arm of the New Israel Fund. He is a former chairman of Labour Friends of Israel, of the Finchley United Synagogue, and the Union of Jewish Students.According to the Daily Telegraph, "Mr Mendelsohn is steeped in the north London Jewish community. He is a close friend of Lord Levy, who was at the heart of Labour's cash for peerages affair."On 5 September 2013 he was created a life peer as Baron Mendelsohn, of Finchley in the London Borough of Barnet.He is married with four children. His wife Nicola, née Clyne, now Lady Mendelsohn, was appointed Facebook's Vice-President for Europe, the Middle East and Africa in May 2013. She was formerly chairman of the advertising agency Karmarama, deputy chairman of the advertising agency Grey London and past President of the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising.